Over the years I've increasingly come to feel that my own nature is integral to all being or nature – that I'm part and parcel to the whole process of life or being itself.
You might say that just because I happen to be Paul Martin doesn’t mean that I have to identify exclusively or even primarily with Paul Martin. This leaves me with little concern over the idea of personal immortality.
At the same time, I continue to understand why so many people care deeply about this idea. In life as we know it, it doesn't get any better than being with loved ones.
This brings to mind the western concept of heaven – kind of like a family reunion – and the eastern concept of nirvana, where we finally come not to personal or individual immortality but a universal consciousness.
What are your thoughts and feelings about all this?
Notes
The Axe – Sorry about that - to the couple of people who commented on that last post about the tree. Long story short is that I’ve, uh, chopped it down...
As Time Allows – I’m no longer able to reply to every comment and email I receive. Disease progression with more bedridden time means having to focus on getting posts done. But I read everything I get, and at times take direction from comments and emails for upcoming posts. So please keep them coming and I’ll reply as time allows.
Hmm…
I’m running into kind of a Catch-22. I’d been thinking of blogging material that might make for a book and just finished writing the first piece that seems to work well. However…
I find that it takes a lot more time to write a bit of book, so to speak, than a self-contained blog post. So my original idea of blogging a book and getting feedback as I go may not be so great – I’m now noticing my traffic falling off pretty sharply because more writing time means I’m taking longer between posts and getting around less to other blogs.
In other words, I still haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to work with my increased time limitations.
Many people have a worldview that includes belief in God or the divine. This allows believers to see the kind of world they want to see, and often for truly wonderful reasons.
Recently an uncle of mine died. He was very conscientious about going to church. His wife of fifty-plus years had died ten years earlier. He believed that she was in heaven and wanted to be as certain as possible that he’d go there too because he wanted to be with her again.
His belief that he was likely heading her way was a comfort to him as he lay dying from cancer. Religious and spiritual beliefs tell people that life really is the way they’d like it to be after all.
The Secret to God’s Popularity
Think of Jesus. Apart from belief in a resurrection that revealed him as Savior, it’s hard to imagine people coming to worship him. Jesus is worshipped as the bringer of salvation.
More broadly, the same can be said of the idea of God. God makes the world a hospitable place in the eyes of believers. A God who was no more than a finite higher intelligence without the power to preserve and fulfill the lives of believers wouldn’t be God – wouldn’t be an object of worship and couldn’t be an object of faith.
Past lives, special energies, nirvana… Human beings have a long history of telling and believing narratives that present the full story of the world as including divine forces that uphold us.
What’s Your Story?
If your worldview includes belief in God or the divine, how do you think it would affect you if you were to stop believing?
If you don’t believe in God or the divine, what perspective do you have on life’s joys and losses? Would you like to believe, or are you happy with your outlook?
Thoughts Prompted by Your Comments
Person A fervently believes in God and God’s forgiveness and leads a life of moral depravity. Person B is an adamant atheist and is thoughtful, kind, and contributes to the lives of others.
What primary meaning do you give to the concept of “religious” or “spiritual?”
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Please note – Declining computer time due to disease progression means having to focus on getting posts done. Much as I enjoy it, at this point I can’t reply to all or even most comments, but will certainly read them all and at times may take direction from them for upcoming posts.
Hope you’ll continue to participate with your insights and observations, and I’ll comment as time allows.
God comes to mind when people think about religion, the divine when people think about spirituality. Each concept has variations and elaborations that tell more specifically what God or the divine are like – just how they operate and who their best representatives are.
There are also those who don’t think much of religion and spirituality. They believe that people make this stuff up. When they look at the world, they just see the universe, nature, life, or being-itself, with no added Energy or Entity.
Nobody knows it all; that’s why it’s called faith or belief, not certain knowledge. The atheistically-inclined don’t know it all either. Often they enthusiastically embrace science – but scientists are still doing science. It’s a process. They don’t know it all either.
You don’t know what you don’t know. The sum of all human knowledge may well be the tiniest fraction of what there is to know. Astronomers don’t even know if this is the only universe. If there’s more than one, we’d have to wonder whether universes would necessarily be the only kind or category of large-scale phenomenon to be found in all-nature. Either way, it’s not like we can stick our necks outside our universe to check up on it…
Existence Exists!
Despite these different ideas about reality, there’s one thing we generally agree on: some sort of big-picture or greatest-context truly does exist.
Sure, there’s that old “it’s all a dream and everything is subjective” notion that’s sometimes floated in philosophical conversations. But I’ve never known anyone to live by it – maybe because anyone who did would be dead! You’d definitely be a menace to yourself and others if you didn’t see fast-moving vehicles, for example, as having the potential to impact more than your subject impression. And people take their opinions and arguments about political, religious, work-related, and many other matters with a seriousness that belies the idea that they don’t really believe they concern things beyond themselves.
The big picture that we all see ourselves as being part of is the being in “being part of.” It’s the here in “What am I doing here” – or the world in “What in the world am I doing here?”
The existence of a big picture or largest context is as uncontroversial as it is obvious. Controversy arises when people have different ideas about the big picture’s working parts – especially when it comes to the inclusion or exclusion of divine or Godly working parts.
They’d just fished, no talk, with the only sounds in their ears all afternoon a beaver dam’s steady churning dashed with odd splashes and topped from time to time by the thin whine of a cast line or punctuated from below by the dim plop of a sinker.
- By me... from a short story manuscript
There’s awkward silence and angry silence, but this is an example of what might be called “communal silence.” A great thing!
Shifting Gears
Blog tour done. Thanks to everyone who looked in/commented. My productive hours have continued to decline with disease progression - I was able to do all those guest posts by writing about half of them over a period of the few months prior to the tour starting, but at this point…
More time pressure. Recent progression of the disease means less time than ever for personal stuff like visiting the blogs of longstanding blogging buddies and answering personal email.
A different approach. Thought I’d try something different – no idea if it will work. But instead of posting about this or that, I thought I’d try focusing most of my future posts on particular topics that go together in a sequence that makes sense. In other words, thought I might try blogging a book, or at least material that could pretty easily be turned into a manuscript.
Roses are red Violets are blue But they would be pink If their thoughts didn’t stink.
Anonymous
It’s possible to be “positive” in ways that are highly negative because they lead people to respond to the hardships of others not with compassion but with some set of beliefs that blames them for "attracting" awful stuff to themselves through their own negative thinking.
Clearly it’s a good thing to avoid self-defeating thoughts, something long recognized by conventional wisdom, spirituality, and cognitive psychology. But to suppose that every kind of human suffering and hardship results from the individual’s own self-defeating thoughts is wildly unrealistic and judgmental.
If this isn’t apparent to one and all upon a moment’s serious reflection about what sorts of things happen every day to all kinds of people, then I could do a post on this – or you could just think a little more about the notion that in life as we know it, wholesome-minded folks consistently prosper while only negative thinkers die in infancy (?!), as civilian casualties in warfare, fall sick, etc. etc.
Like all of us, people who believe the law of attraction end up experiencing terrible losses sooner or later and, in the end, dying. Like others, their deaths are usually preceded by physical suffering, with the death scene rarely played out in the comfort of a peaceful, home-like setting.
“It can’t happen to me because I think happy thoughts” is a belief ready to backfire and fill the believer with needless self reproach, meanwhile putting him or her in the position of passing negative judgment on the inner lives of everyone who suffers - friends, relatives, even perfect strangers - regardless of any evidence that they are in fact particularly negative thinkers and even in the face of evidence that they are not. After all, if there's no sign that someone who suffers greatly has mental problems, they must be unconscious.
I hope - I hope but do not necessarily believe - that anyone who thinks this way is unconsciously aware that this line of reasoning makes no sense.
Spirituality Beyond Conscious Choices, and... A Super Lotto, Kind Of!!!
Beyond Conscious Choice
That’s the topic of “Do You Stop to Ask Directions?” – my article today at A Woman’s Guide to Saner Living. Chris, thank you for the opportunity to guest post.
A Conscious Choice: Participate in Book Giveaway???
Since commenters to date already have copies of OF, if you leave a comment and someone else wins, maybe they'll offer you theirs. In any case, this article only has a few comments so far, so your odds are good...
Look at it this way: your odds of winning are way better than any lottery, and the book - well, it's priceless according to both my mom and Aunt Minnie. Plus there are other people who like it too...
Spirituality, Gender, Bad French, and a Seinfeld Reference
Viva La Difference?
I’ve seen a number of blogs touch on the topic of spirituality and gender. (Touché, risqué, and ooh la la…) People seem to see no spiritual gender differences and basically agree that spirituality is spirituality – but then it’s not like I’ve taken a scientific poll…
The fact that women in the clergy is still controversial in many circles and that God is the traditional Father in western religion suggests that many people continue to view female spirituality as inferior or somehow properly subordinated to male spirituality - i.e., different.
But I sure can’t put my finger on a difference. Perhaps if I were more fluent in French…
Le Psychologie…
Even vis a vis the psychological realm, there are always plenty of exceptions to the lists of traits commonly associated with one gender or the other. For example, I’ve met any number of gentle, considerate men who don’t come off as woman-like or effeminate on that account. And there are certainly plenty of women in business with drive, ambition, and highly rational approaches to decision making who don’t come across as manly.
Une Observationne
To go from being a girl to a woman, you just need to have your first period.
To be accepted as a “real man” has more exacting requirements.
Les Questionnes…
What’s a “real man” and how come women get to be real women without undergoing feats of strength at Festivus?
How come lists of traits don’t really seem to cut it when it comes to definitively indicating gender – and yet, speaking personally, my sense is that there really is a definitive difference?
An illustration of that certain je ne sais quoi: I’ve met gentle, considerate, and even nurturing men whom I’ve respected and admired without feeling the least romantic involvement. Something not only about their bodies but their souls, or at least their psyches at some deep level, fails to evoke that response in me.
Can you put a figurative finger on sex differences in psychology? Spirituality?
Um… Ohm? See my guest post to On Simplicity - thanks, Sara!
And my two young arms dropped to the floor tom, A swift triplet ending it on a bass kick. Then smash it, Crash it, thrashing the flashing gold Of every cymbal flaring its fascinating dish Of overlapping reverberations like a chorus of monks Sustaining fading Ohms, underpinned by the Thick and solid thud of the bass drum…
Excepted from my poem “Cutting Time”
Listening to music can be a spiritual experience, and making music too – yes even if you play the drums…
"Secular Values" vs. Faith in the Public Schools
. . . is the topic for my Thursday Oct. 8th guest post at Mom-E-Centric. Thanks for having me, Jerri!
"By the strong hand of our own love, we can even get the spin of a good influence from what was originally a bad or even terrible experience. We can use it for taking our best shot. For we are here to stay in the game until we start to gain a bird’s eye view of the court we’re all playing on, like Michael Jordan figuring whether to shoot, drive, or pass to somebody you wouldn’t even think he could see from where he was standing. Pain contracts us at first, but then enlarges our point of view if we face it until we can do something more than just react."
Have you ever found yourself truly inspired by a figure or event from the world of sports?
